Horses of a different persuasion

 

I wish to make a pronouncement, several, in fact.

I’m not a liberal.

I’m not a conservative.

I’m an independent voter with fiscally conservative leanings.

I think Big Government is too big and the only ones who can change that won’t because they feel powerless. (Hint: You, me, the voters.)

I am for civil rights. Heck, I love civil rights, especially when they pertain to me.

And, I distain nutcases regardless of party affiliation, political bent, or something important like … hairstyle.

One of the biggest nut jobs around today is Glen Beck. He is a Rush Limbaugh clone, although a skinnier, shadow version of the first well-known angry conservative pundit. Beck likes to take folks to the lick-log for disbelieving the political pabulum he spews on his television and radio shows. He seems to have a new target for this righteous indignation every day or two, and sometimes the target does not really seem to matter.

He, along with screamin' liberal-leaner Al Sharpton, is the King of Righteous Indignation and wears his divisive colors proudly. For example, Beck recently stated he will no longer use the Google search engine because of what he claimed were the site’s ties to government agencies and its so-called involvement in the recent turmoil in Egypt.

Say, huh?

Spread that manure a little more smoothly, if you please.

Seriously, the man said, “There’s a strange thing going on with this search engine and our government and we all have to choose who we do business with.” (Without splitting too many fine hairs, the correct grammar for that statement would be …”to choose with whom we do business.”)

Personally, I like Google. I have used it for years and not once have I felt it was being used to overthrow this or any other government. Social media is a tool … and some people use it to push their personal agenda. So?

Not to let the Google matter drop after one stupid comment, Beck explained further: “I’m really not sure that I want my search engine involved in government overthrows, good or bad.”

It’s a major jump from scary to stupid, but Beck did it with aplomb, supreme confidence and graceless energy.

The devoted followers and believers of jaw-droppers like Beck (those of conservative AND/OR liberal bent) are sheep, being led down a path of ridiculousness while trying to fervently embrace philosophical kinship with minor celebrities and larger-than-life demagogues. Beck, Sharpton and the rest of the political preachers of political and ideological faith are not visionaries; they are entertainers doing what they do not for principles but for money.

God protect us from the debilitating influence of the Glen Becks and Al Sharptons of this world. But, then again, if He was even interested in this political mish-mash philosophy mess, He would already done something about it.

Rick Perry: “F” is his grade in education

     Politicians have a strange DNA strand that allows them, almost at will, to insert their foot in their mouths … and still keep on talking.

     It’s too easy, too simplistic, to say that Texas Gov. Ricky Perry is dumb. He is not dumb; he is a graduate of Texas A&M, and all joking aside, that is one fine educational institution. He was an Air Force pilot that the fact that he’s still alive attests to having some degree of smarts. He was an Eagle Scout and that is not an easy task. He was a cheerleader in college … and I’ll let that great opportunity to a stinging, yet thoughtful, jibe just slide on by.

     A former cotton farmer and former Democrat, Perry proved he’s not dumb by making a living from working in the dirt and getting elected three times to the Texas House of Representatives. In 1988 he chaired the president campaign in Texas for Al Gore, and the next year he switched to the Republican Party.

     After running for and being elected state agriculture commissioner and lieutenant governor, he was pushed into the governor’s office when George W. Bush was elected president. Perry has won three terms as governor since 2000.

     I first met Perry when he was Ag Commissioner and he was on a vote-me-in march through East Texas. I remember thinking: Good hair, great teeth, strong handshake … yep, he’ll do just fine as a Texas politician

     He, as has every politician at one time or another, performed stupid politician tricks in his years in office. Perry’s claim to Intellectual Hell will forever be hinged on his executive decisions that severely harmed the state education system. (Just talk to practically any Texas teacher; they all have Perry stories.) But, as an example, when he ran for president in 2011 and 2012, one of his campaign promises was to shut down the U.S. Department of Education.)

     Texas ranks in the Bottom 10 in per student expenditures in education (at No. 9 in 2013 with a “bullet”) and Perry seems proud of that fact.                                                                                                                                  

     He is a Pisces and shares this distinction with Alexander Graham Bell, George Washington, Chaz Bono, Sam Houston, Tammy Faye Bakker Messner, Antonio de Lopez Santa Ana and Osama bin Laden. The single most recognizable trait that all of these folks, and Perry, share is extreme decisiveness.

     Being “decisive” does not always compute into “being right.” Perry’s record on “being right” has more to do with his perception of how the winds of public opinion are blowing at any particular point in time.

     His penchant for cutting funding to public education in Texas is beyond reasonable and measured explanation. While Perry is crowing about how well Texas is doing on the economic front and how much the state has in its surplus account, the state has dropped to more than $3,000 per student below the national average. (To make it clear: Arkansas and Louisiana spends more per student on education that does Texas. The only states that spend less than Texas per student are Utah, Idaho, Oklahoma, Arizona, Mississippi, Tennessee, North Carolina and Nevada.)

     Added to that stat, Texas ranks 38^th in average teacher salaries, down four spots from 2012.

     While the governor claims that “the idea his decisions about education are doing long-term damage to public education funding is just not true.” Last year Texas high school students matched their lowest average scores on the college entrance exam in the past decade; average scores dropped in math, reading and writing.

     He, like others of his party, refuses to acknowledge that the demographics of his constituency are changing at a blazing pace. California and New Mexico now have a higher Hispanic population than white; Texas is projected to join that group no later than 2020.

     As became evident in the 2012 presidential election, ignoring and/or demeaning huge voting blocs will not fly outside of a regional or state political race. Whatever Perry’s future political ambitions may be – and if his disastrous 2012 presidential bid is any indication, that’s all he has … ambitions – he has to begin rethinking and retinkering with his political philosophy.

     A good place to start would be in the area of education. In this area he has worked hard to earn a rousing, romping F. The sad part is the man seems proud of that grade.

     Which leads us back to the original thought: Can he really be that “dumb”?

GOP needs wake-up call

     This country needs a two-party system -- at least two, maybe more.

     Many folks still believe we have two: The Republicans and the Democrats, right?

     Actually, it’s one-and-one-half – The Democratic Party and half of a GOParty.

     The Republican leadership at this point in time in our country’s development (and this country, like most countries, is still developing) has lost touch with the reality of the demographical shift in the United States. The voting power is no longer strictly in the hands of unions and big money; diversity has risen up and slapped the political process upside the head.

     Blacks now make up about 14 percent of the population; Hispanics, at more than 52 million, are almost 17 percent of the population. If my elementary math skills are still intact, that’s about 31 percent. The number of Hispanics without our borders has more than doubled in less than 25 years; within another 25 years, that number will grow exponentially until by 2050, 30 percent of the nation’s residents will be Hispanic.

     These two facts – plus another biggee to be dropped a paragraph from now – seem to elude the Republican Party and its take-no-prisoners chairman, Reece Priebus. He thinks he can bluster his way and his party to the presidency by ignoring demographics and stridently harping on the scourge of the rise of minorities in our political process.

     His ignorance is startling – but not surprising. Politicians and those that are served by them are blissfully ignorant of facts with which they do not agree. Priebus, unlike Robert Steele, the former RNC chairman, has also forgotten another voting bloc that the GOP has tried hard for years to disenfranchise: Women.

     The party of Lincoln and Reagan – now of McConnell, Boehner, Paul and Cruz – conveniently forgets the 156 million women in the U.S. and the influence these modern females have on the home-front voting decisions.

     In the past decade, the Republicans have done just about everything they can do to alienate a large segment of the female voting population on the issue of personal health, i.e., abortion. The likes of Cruz and Paul, today’s front-running darling in the dash for the primary nomination, cater to the extremists of the party (for the moment at least) in order to curry the “early favorite” mantle in the party primaries and caucuses that are still over the horizon.

     Neither can be elected president; you can take that to the bank … or Las Vegas, where they will gladly take your money on that sucker bet.

     Taking the facts that a Democratic candidate – virtually any Democratic candidate – can count on a majority of votes from blacks, Hispanics and women if the GOP stays its historical course, how can the Republicans win the presidency in 2016?

     With the individual members of the herd who has his or her neck stuck out now, they cannot. 

     That statement is not political, it’s demographics mixed with common sense and logic.

     Additionally, the more the GOP tries to skew those voting numbers by bogus voter ID laws that are aimed at reducing the number of minorities who vote, the more minorities will vote. By such actions, the GOP is flatly stating it is a non-inclusive political party. 

     To have a chance to win the presidency in 2016, the GOP has to – HAS TO – move to the center of the political spectrum. And the Tea Party movement will fight any such move tooth-and-claw, creating a wider party chasm than now exists. For the past five years, the leaders of the party have spent so much time and energy “hating” Obama, they have lost sight of the bigger goal … elect a Republican president.

     In order to win the presidency, as a party and as part of their stated and approved platform, the Republicans have to embrace minorities and establish an acceptable (read, flexible) path to citizenship for immigrants, drop the bombastic abortion noise to a murmur (or at least leave that debate to Women of the GOP) and allow that it’s really not a part of the Constitution that any citizen can own an automatic assault rifle or any other weapon of choice.

     The party hardliners will not be able to make those adjustments. And, thusly, the GOP will have to be content to win regional and statewide seats in Congress and let the Democrats run the White House.

     It’s not too early for a wake-up call.